Jim Lovell was a truly remarkable man

I’ve always considered Jim Lovell to be on the Mount Rushmore of American astronauts. If you go by space “firsts” you’d have to list the first American to rocket into space, Alan Shepard, the first to orbit the earth, John Glenn, the first person to walk on the moon besides Alice Kramden (Sorry. Jackie Gleason fans will get it.), Neil Armstrong, and the first American woman in space, Sally Ride.

But Jim Lovell went to space four times, two Gemini missions and two Apollo missions, and his feats were remarkable. With Gemini 7, he was part of the longest duration space flight at that time when no one knew how the human body would react, and on Apollo 8 he was part of the daring first mission to travel to and orbit the moon, a mission that sent to Earth the very moving Earthrise photograph and featured the astronauts reading from the book of Genesis on Christmas Eve.

But his most famous mission was the ill-fated Apollo 13 moon flight, which nearly ended in disaster when an oxygen tank exploded with the spacecraft 200,000 miles from Earth, crippling the spacecraft and forcing the three astronauts to use the lunar module as a lifeboat of sorts, allowing them to survive until they could return to Earth and splash down.

Jim Lovell’s calm leadership played a major role in what was later called “a successful failure” that was the epitome of American resilience, engineering and resourceful problem solving.

Jim Lovell died last Thursday, August 7, and I’ve been thinking about him for a week now, not only because I’m a huge 1960s and early ‘70s spaceflight enthusiast but because Jim Lovell visited our community in 2002 and helped dedicate our downtown veterans memorial park during Mustang Days. I was pleased to interview him during that week.

Our former mayor and state senator, the late Cal Taggart, first invited the famous astronaut to his namesake town in 1969, and as a still active astronaut with NASA, Lovell didn’t have the time, but Cal then presented him with an honorary branding iron during the One Shot Antelope near Lander in 1971 when Lovell participated in the hunt and was made an honorary citizen of Lovell. Former Chronicle publisher Pat Schmidt, then a reporter for the Riverton Ranger, rode along with Lovell that day to report on the event and tells a story about his integrity.

In the One Shot hunt, a hunter was allowed only one bullet to fell his antelope, and when Lovell shot his pronghorn, it went down, and his hunt guide told him the antelope would surely die soon and he would be one of the winners. But Lovell said something like, “I don’t allow anything to suffer like that” and finished off the animal. He was disqualified from the winning group with the second shot, but his character had shown through.

Fast forward to around the year 2001. Mayor Glen Olsen, having heard about Cal’s earlier invitation, reached out to Lovell, and this time he accepted an invitation to come to Lovell in June of 2002, traveling with his son Jay, a well-known chef and restauranter in the Chicago area.

Lovell folks rolled out the red carpet for the Lovells. The activities included a visit to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, a horseback trip through Willow Basin in the Big Horns, a visit to the Medicine Wheel, attending the Follies, boating and fishing on Big Horn Lake, a luncheon at Barry’s Landing, a visit to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, riding in the Mustang Days Parade with Jim as grand marshal, the park dedication and a tour of Yellowstone.

Near the end of his time here, Captain Lovell told me in an interview that the hospitality shown him by the community made a tremendous impression on him. He called the week “even a lot more than we expected” and said the hospitality was tremendous. He talked about how he met good people and remarked how patriotic the community was and how refreshing that was to him. Jay said meeting people here was like talking to guys he’d known all his life and said everyone bent over backwards to make the Lovells feel at home.

A few things about that interview still stick out in my mind to this day besides Lovell’s gracious appreciation for his time in our community. He said when he and Jeff Kluger first wrote the book “Lost Moon” about the Apollo 13 mission, Hollywood jumped on the idea of making a movie about the dramatic events of the mission, but when Lovell read the first screenplay, he was horrified by the writer having the astronauts use the “F word” 23 times. He said his reaction was, “This is awful. We didn’t swear like that,” and he nearly pulled his support for the project.

Director Ron Howard, having also read the screenplay, intervened and “threw it out,” Lovell said. Howard and Universal Studios started over, and the new screenplay was much better and mostly true to the story, with Lovell acting as an official consultant on the project. Tom Hanks played Lovell in the movie.

The only scene in the movie where a great deal of Hollywood poetic licence was used was the scene following the explosion where two astronauts argued and blamed each other. That didn’t happen, Lovell told me. After all, the astronauts were test pilots used to risky, high stress situations. They simply worked the problem, though they were surely scared.

Jim Lovell urged the filmmakers to take that scene out of the movie, but they said they needed to show the anxiety and stress of the situation, and the best way was by inventing the argument.

I have rarely, if ever, met a man I respected more than Jim Lovell. This guy was rock solid, proud but not haughty, good natured, patient with those who wanted a piece of his time or an autograph and always congenial, a class act from head to toe.

The word hero is tossed around far too often, in my opinion, but in the case of Captain James Lovell, it fits him to a tee. Visiting with him and seeing him in action in our community 23 years ago was something I’ll never forget.

Rest in peace, Captain Lovell.